Topflappen Swappen!

The end of April means potholder swap! This past Saturday was swap day - which included a drive out to snowy western MA - and many many potholders:



Maryse, Cheryl, and I were hosted by Adrian to sort and divvy ~500 potholders. And eat delicious food and laugh, of course.



I managed to come home with lots of great potholders, but also a vicious sinus infection/cold, which left me pretty useless and crabby for a few days. I only had enough energy and concentration to work on mindless things, which was perfect for getting a few more (loooong) rows in on this giant granny square afghan:



This is all sorts of odds and ends of handspun yarn and assorted worsted weight bundles. There's a lot of Cascade 220 leftovers, ends of handspun projects (some are fingering-weight or so, I've been using them doubled up), and things that I've picked up and collected along the way. It's slow going, but I figure it's a great way to deal with some of the ends and miscellany that accumulates around here.

I also finally - FINALLY! - cleared off all of the bobbins. My final bobbin was about 1/4 full of a sweater lot of SCF "Alexandria" in Cheviot wool:



I filled up 4 bobbins and managed to get about 1100 yards of 2-ply out of it. It's quite plump, and has a great drape. I'm debating sweater patterns currently, but I hope to have something completed with this by this next autumn. We'll see. I still need to finish this:



...my "Coventry" sweater. I'm on the second sleeve, but not very far into it. I'm hoping to finish up the sleeve in the next week or two and join up for the yoke portion. This sweater also features a keyhole scarf neck, which is REALLY going to be the pits. My tolerance for scarf knitting is very very very low!!!

I'm trying to stay focused and not wildly cast-on for 264362 projects (which is what I really want to do) - MUST. FINISH. SWEATER! And work on giant granny afghan a bit, too.

Spring Cleaning

Well, some bobbin spring cleaning. I've had a bunch of bobbins with little bits of projects on them and they've been haunting me. For various reasons I hadn't finished the yarn and cleared them off (not in the mood for lace, wasn't spinning up as planned, etc.) but I figured it best just to sit down and tackle them and clear them off. As of this post, I've only got 1 bobbin left with anything on it, and it's the first of a sweater lot! Here's what we've got so far:



"Botanical Extracts" from FatCatKnits, Merino/Mohair/Nylon, about 520 yards (gift from Weetsie!)



"Speckled" (split up and carded) from HelloYarn, Merino.


"Uluru" from SCF, in Superwash BFL. Also a gift from weetsie!

There's a bit more of the fiber, but that isn't all that I've been doing! There has been a TON of sewing going on.



I finally got around to making up one of these origami quilts I had been thinking about AGES ago - this is the Maine Lobster. The reverse side is red with white stitching. This went fairly smoothly, and I definitely think I'll be making more of these in the future.



I made this skirt! Every year I buy one or two lengths of fabric with the intention of making skirts, and every year I DO NOT MAKE SKIRTS. I finally got around to making some skirts and really got on a roll - I made 4 so far. All o the skirts are reverse-engineered from favorite (store-bought) skirts that I wear constantly through the warmer months. I put pockets in all of them as well (REAL pockets, not dinky girl-clothes "pockets"), and I've been wearing them all a ton/ Geez, why did this take me so long?!?!?



There's been a little bit of knitting......


.......and even some weaving. I'm obsessed with Houndstooth these days :)

Ooh, AND I finished my Topflappen!